Collect 314 Thousand Signatures, Vladimir Putin Officially Registered As A Presidential Candidate For The Russian Election In March

Vladimir Putin's illustration when voting in the election. (Wikimedia Commons/The Presidential Press and Information Office)

JAKARTA - Russian President Vladimir Putin's incumbent is officially listed as one of the candidates in the presidential election to be held next March, after pocketing the support required by the country's election organizers.

Russia's Central General Election Commission (CEC) has officially registered Vladimir Putin as a presidential candidate from an independent path to participating in elections on March 15-17.

"(The decision) has been taken unanimously," said CEC Chair Ella Pamfilova, as reported by TASS on January 30.

Meanwhile, CEC Secretary Natalya Budarina explained, as required by law, 60,000 support signatures have been randomly selected for verification of 315,000 signatures collected for Putin.

"The results of the verification, 91 signatures of 60,000 people were declared invalid due to misinformation by voters. The 91 illegal signatures were 0.15 percent of the verified ones," he explained.

Budariana further detailed that there were no fake signatures. The number of valid voter signatures reached 314,909.

"That's enough for candidate registration," he said.

Vladimir Putin is the fourth presidential candidate to be registered by the CEC. Previously, federal election authorities registered candidates from three parliamentary parties: Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vladislav Davankov of New People and Nikolay Kharitonov of the Community Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).

The upcoming presidential election will be the fifth election in Putin's political career.

He was first elected president in 2000, before being re-elected in 2004 and then re-elected in 2012, after a four-year term as prime minister in 2008-2012 and again in 2018.

Of all the elections he has participated in, Putin achieved the best results in the 2018 election by earning 76.69 percent of the vote.